"Undermining" Swift Vets, Ruing "False Information" on Blogs, Talk Radio -- August 23, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for August 23, 2004

"Undermining" Swift Vets, Ruing "False Information"
on Blogs, Talk Radio

Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg's front-page story for Monday, "Kerry TV Ad Pins Veterans' Attack Firmly On Bush," insists that the claims made by the Swift Boat veterans against John Kerry are "undermined" by official records. The vets were joined in their Kerry criticism on Sunday by a World War II veteran, to the paper's evident disappointment: "Bob Dole, the Republican presidential candidate in 1996 and a World War II veteran, called on Mr. Kerry to apologize to Vietnam veterans in a television interview on CNN. He appeared to get behind some of the accusations raised by the group, when its most serious contentions have been undermined by official records and conflicting accounts."

Donning his campaign analysis hat, correspondent Nagourney frets in Saturday's paper on Kerry's failure to quickly counterattack against the Swift vets. Midway through "Kerry Might Pay Price for Failing to Strike Back Quickly," Nagourney laments: "In fairness to Mr. Kerry, his aides were faced with a strategic dilemma that has become distressingly familiar to campaigns in this era when so much unsubstantiated or even false information can reach the public through so many different forums, be it blogs or talk-show radio."

Apparently blogs and talk-radio simply can't match the matchless fact-checking that is the Times' birthright. (the paper has clearly recovered its chutzpa after its Jayson Blair embarrassment).

Yet despite what Nagourney implies, the allegations made by the Swift Boat veterans have yet to be proven false--unlike one made by the Kerry campaign itself, which was forced to withdraw Kerry's candidate's false claim of being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968.

For Monday's story from Nagourney and Rutenberg, click here.

For Saturday's story from Nagourney, click here.

Objecting to the Bush-McCain Marriage of Convenience

Jilted at the alter? After trying its best to bring Sens. John McCain and John Kerry together, the Times uses its Saturday front page to mock the pairing of President Bush and McCain.

Todd Purdum's story, "Bearhug Politics: Careful Steps to a New Bush-McCain Alliance," begins: "It was one of the odder embraces in American politics since Sammy Davis Jr. hugged Richard M. Nixon at the Republican Convention 32 years ago this summer: George W. Bush and John McCain's back-wrapping bearhug and side-head-smooch on the campaign trail last week. For most of the past four years, Mr. McCain and the man who beat him for the Republican nomination in a bitter campaign in 2000 have treated each other like a pair of reversed magnets, members of the same metallurgical family held apart by reciprocal repulsion. Now their locked arms are raising eyebrows."

Later Purdum notes: "The thaw began last spring, just around the time that Mr. McCain allowed the fantasy of his becoming Mr. Kerry's running mate to flourish for a news cycle or two, and the Kerry camp did its best to keep the idea alive for weeks."

Of course, so did the Times.

For the full Purdum on Bush-McCain, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Sen. John McCain | Todd Purdum

The Vanishing Republican Moderate, Again

Carl Hulse on Monday previews the philosophical bent of the upcoming Republican convention in Manhattan in "G.O.P. Centrists to Speak, but Will They Be Heard?"

Hulse employs the standard liberal media trope regarding that allegedly disappearing species, the Republican moderate: "Those who once might have been called Rockefeller Republicans say the prime-time slots set aside to present a centrist image show that the leadership knows the party must broaden its appeal to retain the White House. But they worry about their real influence in a party dominated by conservatives at a time when the ranks of House moderates are thinning and an activist group zeros in on candidates it brands RINO's, Republican in Name Only….When coupled with a handful of other retirements, the departures raise the question of whether it is possible for a Republican to survive near the middle of the road, particularly in a House where the leadership likes to drive on the right."

"Maverick" media hero John McCain, who has broken with the allegedly conservative Bush on many issues, is somehow not included as one of those moderates: "In the Senate, a handful of moderates, when teamed with maverick-minded Republicans like John McCain of Arizona, have wielded some power. Most notably this year they blocked the extension of some tax cuts and passage of a budget on the grounds that the tax breaks needed to be offset with spending decreases…..This is where the party started,' Mrs. Whitman said of the wing that likes to be known for fiscal conservatism and social pragmatism. 'We need to start flexing our muscle a little more to remind people of that.'"

For the rest of Hulse on disappearing Republican moderates, click here.

Giving Bush an Art Attack

Caryn James' Weekend section story "Political Art, Potshots to Sure Shots," uses the new John Sayles' film "Silver City" as a lead-in to run through the myriad anti-Republican/anti-Bush documentaries, pseudo-documentaries, and theatre productions coming out or being reissued as the election looms. Though James ends up unimpressed with most of the polemical films as art, photos of the productions still fill a half-page of the paper.

James does like Sayles' anti-Bush work: "His performance and Mr. Sayles's exhilarating script and direction make 'Silver City' (opening next month) something rare among the dozens of politically themed works on screen and on stage: a Bush-bashing work that is more than Bush-bashing. As the film goes beyond election-year satire to reach broader themes of corporate power, campaign double talk and journalistic responsibility, it sheds light on why so few political works succeed as art or simple entertainment."

James also criticizes Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," but only to say that Moore's previous left-wing work was so much better: "No recent Bush-bashing work has had more resonance, or more critical and commercial success, than Mr. Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' of course. It's the work of an artful polemicist, yet his earlier 'Bowling for Columbine' is a better film, using all the wit and ploys at Mr. Moore's command to persuade audiences that America's lax gun regulations are absurd. 'Fahrenheit' doesn't entirely preach to the converted (seeing Mr. Bush's seven-minute silence after learning about the 9/11 attacks may be startling even to his supporters), but it comes close."

Movie critic Dave Kehr also has something nice to say about left-wing Moore in Friday's edition: "Mr. Moore's film is dominated, of course, by Mr. Moore, a gifted comedian who has created an appealing character with his signature baseball caps and XXL T-shirts." His review, however, was about an anti-war documentary from Robert Greenwald (who also put together the misleading anti-Fox News film "Outfoxed"): "Mr. Greenwald focuses on a simple, demonstrable point: that the war in Iraq was sold to Congress and the American public through a coordinated series of public misstatements that at best look like wishful thinking and at worst like outright deception. Mr. Greenwald presents a Macy's parade of experts--everyone from John Dean to David A. Kay--in support of his thesis, though the star of the show is Ray McGovern, an articulate and dryly funny former C.I.A. analyst who now heads the anti-invasion group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity."

Kehr should know better than to embrace McGovern, given McGovern's dubious track record of comments. In April 2003, he suggested the U.S. would plant WMD in Iraq if they failed to find it: "Some of my colleagues are virtually certain that there will be some weapons of mass destruction found, even though they might have to be planted. I'm just as sure that some few will be found, but not in an amount that by any stretch would justify the charge of a threat against the US or anyone else." (Read more about the left-wing VIPS group here.)

In Sunday's Arts & Leisure, Jason Zengerle gives free publicity to left-wing anti-Bush internet sites, including MoveOn.org, in "The State of the George W. Bush Joke."

"And it's not just political pros putting Bush jokes to political use," writes Zengerle. "The spirit seems to have also taken hold at the grass roots. When MoveOn held a 'Bush in 30 Seconds' contest last fall in which it asked people to come up with their own anti-Bush ads, it received more than 1,500 submissions--a number of them making their political points with humor. One particularly inspired home-made ad titled 'If the Bush Administration Was Your Roommate' featured a belligerent twenty-something guy wreaking havoc on his group house, unilaterally deciding to paint it green and refusing to wash his dishes. This same lightheartedness will be on display among some of the protesters at the Republican National Convention next week."

(Zengerle doesn't mention the "lightheartedness" of the ad that appeared on MoveOn.org that compared Bush to Hitler.)

Zengerle continues: "'Billionaires for Bush,' for example--the political street theater group that features protestors in tuxes and ball gowns chanting slogans like 'Blood for Oil' and 'Small Government, Big War'--has planned a 'Million Billionaire March' and a 'Vigil for Corporate Welfare.'….The greatest evidence of this new jokey spirit on the left can be found on the Internet, which is home to hundreds if not thousands of independent sites put up by random people who happen to have a political grudge and a sense of humor. Shortly after 9/11, David Rees launched a cartoon strip called 'Get Your War On' (www.mnftiu.cc /mnftiu.cc/war.html). While the mainstream media were still waving flags and speaking in hushed tones, Mr. Rees was attracting a devoted following for his devastatingly sarcastic take on the news."

For the rest of James on anti-Republican art, click here.

For the rest of Kehr's review, click here.

For the rest of Zengerle's review, click here.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org